ISCSI Data Replicaton + Vmware
Is anybody using the ISCSI replication between 2 DSS servers, with ESX 3.01 ?
We currently have running :-
2 DSS servers (Dell 2900)'s with 900 Ggig of storage on each for VMDK's (VMFS)
1 DSS server (Supermicro), that will eventually be used to be the destination for the ISCSI replication (ONCE replication from multiple sources to a single destination is supported)
2 Dell 6850's running ESX 3.01, running the VM's. ESX servers boot from DAS, VM's boot from ISCSI on the DSS boxes.
This is currently working in production, but i was wondering if anyone has statred to use the ISCSI replication, with VMware and is it working for them. IE failover, having both the source and destination Luns visible in ESX ??
Thanks all
Update on ISCSI Volume replication with vmware
Thought i would do an update on this.
I have now set up the test environment and been doing some testing. Initally i had a few problems, during failover but these were soon rectified.
Test setup
2 HP DL380's one as the source the other as the destination
Created 2 small ISCSI LUNS'to keep replication times down a bit. Luns are 30 gig on each server.
REplication via direct gig connection between the servers
ISCSI Lan over a seperate gigabit switch
Vmware server
HP DL380, with VMware ESX 3.0.2
Using Hardware ISCSI HBA. Note that they are QLA4010 (not officially supported by Vmware anymore, but still work)
TEST
Created the replication task on the source server and allowed everything to sync up, took about 10mins for the task to get to a consistant state.
Added the Source Lun into vmware (using ESX 3.0.2)
Created the VMFS partition, and then installed 2 test vm's (windows 2003)
1st test Clean swap over
Shut down the 2 Virtual servers
Stopped the replication task between the 2 DSS servers
removed the Source LUN from the 1st DSS server
Changed the 2nd DSS server's LUN to be a source from destination
On the vmware side ran vmkfstools -V , checked in the VIC, that i could see the replicated LUN, and it was all there. Powered up the VM's again... All working fine.:)
There were some small bits that needed doing to get to this stage but nothing too complex.
Next test will be a total failue of the DSS server (Power the source off with VM's still running). I will post my findings soon